Friday, January 10, 2014

Why America Breaks Our Hearts

A man named LK dropped me an e-mail, in response to my Falling Forward piece.

In the piece, I discussed the inability of the United States to adjust after the end of the Cold War. My crazed ramblings garnered a great deal of reaction, both positive and negative—but LK’s e-mail stood out.

The first words that caught my eye fairly smacked me upside the head:

Wake up and realize you are married to a whore!

I’m recently married with a new baby—LK’s words did not sit very well with me at all. Who does this guy think he is?, I thought to myself, in the first flush of anger at this perceived insult.

But just a quick glance down the e-mail, and I realized LK wasn’t trying to insult me. It wasn’t even me that he was was writing to. I was just the focus he used to express his pain—a pain and hurt that I’ve felt too, a pain and hurt that over the last few years has grown worse and worse.

The pain and hurt that is the United States of America.

LK’s e-mail continued:

Wake up and realize you are married to a whore!

Please let me explain what I am trying to say.

Let's say – You are a happily married man for 15 years to a beautiful woman, then one day you learn that for the last 10 years your wife has been having affairs with different men.

Can you see how all the perceptions, memories, feelings suddenly become – bullshit?

When you realize that for 10 years – what you thought was a loving relationship – was a TOTAL DECEPTION??

Let me ask you something related to this scenario.

DID YOU THINK your wife was always a loving, devoted, sincere person, then all of a sudden one day became a DECEITFUL – Lying Bitch?

I strongly suggest her nature was always deceitful and you were BLINDED by beauty or sex or whatever perception problem you have.

[ . . . ]

See AMERICA as the deceitful BITCH she has always been

Granted – AMERICANS are Blinded by her Beauty and Sex-Appeal – but that is their problem.

We still have to DEAL with her corrupt and Deceitful Character . we have to WAKE UP!

Look at your writing with the EYES of a man WHO has just come to realize that his WIFE has been FUCKING all HIS BEST FRIENDS, and laughing at him behind his BACK.

I hope You realize today that THIS is the CHARACTER of AMERICA

He signed his full name at the end of this note he sent.

LK’s e-mail doesn’t make a bit of sense in any kind of rational, logical way: There’s not a single rational argument running through this rant—it’s nothing more than a naked rant . . .

. . . but there’s an emotion in his words about America which makes perfect sense. And a depth of feeling which cannot be ignored.

Often I find myself feeling exactly the same as LK: An inchoate rage at what I perceive that the United States has become. A hurt at what the country has become, a hurt as real as if it were a wound in my body.

Why? Why this anger? Why this hurt? Why this bitter depth of feeling? Such a bitter disappointment that swells my heart until it aches—until I think it will burst: A bitter disappointment shot through with rage and fear and bottomless sorrow, like at the thought of a child dying violently, and by the hand of a murderer—

—why?

It goes back to what the United States started out as: A fragile, delicate, wonderful experiment.

And it ends with what the United States has become: A monstrous, perverted, evil regime.

There’s really no other way to look at it—it’s too obvious. And it’s too dangerous a truth to be ignored: We have to look this monster in the face, if we want to deal with it.

See, the United States was a naïve political experiment that was supposed to fail. Functioning republics were rare, in the history prior to 1789—I say prior to 1789 because at the time that the American Constitution was implemented, there were no republics of any note.

There had been a few republics prior to 1789—but successful republics? Not a one. They’d devolved into dictatorships—like Rome—or fallen to internal squabbling, until they had been overrun by stronger, more focused foes disdainful of such niceties as democracy and freedom and equality.

The United States was a grand experiment in the great Enlightenment ideals—equality, freedom, democracy—a grand experiment that was supposed to fail—

—but miraculously, it succeeded.

And it succeeded because it was an egalitarian republic of free people. It was because no man was better than any other that it succeeded. The station you were born to did not dictate your fate—the first time in history such a thing had happened.

In America, you were truly free: You were no less than any other man, and you could become whomsoever you wanted to become—even president.

The odds were stacked against such a crazed, idealistic enterprise—but it succeeded, and because of the very freedoms it encouraged and protected, it became stronger.

I always thought that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were immutable—their very simplicity seemed to me to make them immutable: They were vague, certainly, but that very vagueness in all the Bill of Rights seemed to make it that much harder for them to be evaded.

I never imagined they could be corrupted, or perverted.

And I never imagined that anyone less than the best would rise, in the American republic: As a classless republic, I always assumed that the best would rise to the top—not just the best in ability, but the best in moral sense, the best in decency.

But what has happened is, people of base character have reached positions of power, in America. The leadership classes—in the arts, the sciences, government, industry, culture, finance, the judiciary, and the military—are corrupt, hateful beings who have quite casually yet quite deliberately distorted, perverted and overthrown the principles of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights for the sake of their own positions and their own betterment.

Through a complex process of cynical self-selection, the people who have reached the top in America are men and women who see principles as window-dressing, laws as obstacles to be overcome, decency as weakness—or worse still, decency and goodness as an anachronism.

These leadership classes have betrayed everything that the United States stands for, in every facet of American life:

• A political leadership class that refuses to prosecute evildoers, guilty of the worst crimes imaginable—kidnappings, torture, murder—yet which hysterically persecutes those who criticize it or reveal its most awful secrets, a political leadership quite willing to break the law, in order to hurt their critics and whistelblowers. A political class which quite deliberately—with full knowledge of the consequences—is driving the United States to bankruptcy, for the sake of protecting and enriching its financiers.

• A military that fights wars of conquest, and behaves with criminal, immoral indiference to the suffering of others, violating each and every one of the laws of war, man and God, while limiting itself to punishing those who reveal its wrongdoing.

• An arts establishment that is corporatist, refusing to face up to the horrendous crimes of the leadership classes, content instead to lick the boots of its paymasters, instead of speak of truth or beauty.

• An industrial leadership that has no qualms about manufacturing products that poison and harm people, if it will mean more profits.

• A financial leadership that with good reason are called “banksters”. A financial leadership which has coöpted the political leadership class more thoroughly than if they’d simply bought them outright—and so therefore is unafraid of any punishment for their actions, because they know there will never be any.

• A judiciary that has no problem allowing for the elimination of the most basic rights human beings have—habeas corpus, the right to due process, the right not to be tortured. A judiciary that has rolled back every single right as embodied in the Bill of Rights.

• A scientific establishment more concerned with winning research funds, rather than arriving at the truth—indeed, a scientific establishment willing to sacrifice the truth, in order to secure more funding and be on the right side of current political fashion.

• A cultural establishment that cannot bring itself to protest or even mention the gross injustices committed by the political, military, judicial and finacial elites—yet is outraged over ephemera and perceived racism, sexism, homophobia or elitism.

But perhaps the worst betrayal inflicted on the ideal of America has been the betrayal wrought by the majority of the American people—the Morbid Majority of the American people: Those fat, pathetic, manatee-like things that bounce through shopping centers, constantly paranoid about their safety, placating every sensory craving while indifferent to the crimes of their leaders, so long as these hamplanets continue to feel “safe”.

LK’s inchoate rage at America is just as much a rage at the people who now have their hands on the levers of power, as it is at the mass of massive people who are content to live under their whiphand.

We all see what’s going on—it’s no secret, or a great mystery: We recognize that America is a financially bankrupt nation—a nation fighting unjust wars with immoral methods—a nation whose citizens wallow in their own ignorance like pigs in shit—a nation that tortures, kidnaps and kills people who haven’t even done anything, committing these atrocities without even a fig leaf of due process—a nation that encourages banksters to steal with both fists.

Yet we also see what America was supposed to be—what it once was: A nation of ideas and ideals. A nation of people who strove to educate themselves and better themselves. A nation of people who did not feel entitled to anything, only grateful for the opportunities that they had. A nation that fought wars for the sake of justice, not out of an urge for conquest or an irrational sense of fear. A nation of people who looked the truth in the face—most especially truths about themselves—and did not rationalize or explain away their own shortcomings, or try blaming them on circumstances or somebody else.

In short, America was supposed to be a nation of goodness.

That goodness is gone—replaced by this awful, sickening, oozing pus that comes out of the top from the American leadership classes, and rolls down to the bottom, sliming the entire country with a thin viscous slathering of putrid rot.

I can understand LK’s inarticulate rage. I feel it too.

Now, the question is, Is there anything to be done about it? Is there? Or is too late.

25 comments:

I agree with pretty much with everything in this. Here is what you left out: a cultural/media complex hell bent on celebrating and normalizing every perversion (sexual and otherwise) known to mankind. A populace unwilling to shoulder any responsibility in any area of their lives and eager to parasitically attach to the dwindling number of those who are responsible.

As a 12th generation American whose people went through the Siege of Boston, the Republic has not died. Pockets of good, decent people are everywhere, but we are out numbered by false voters.In the past only those with a business, or land, or a bank account could vote; how else to vote those people responsible for the budget (Congress). Justice Marshall spent more time in Congress than some Senators/Representatives. (Don't pass this legislation--it's illegal, immoral, unconstitutional etc.) The Supreme Court was pro-active, as well as deciding appeals.The President was not a king surrounded by ONLY sycophants.

Good people go about life---standing up, speaking out and paying the costs (divorce, lost jobs, jail, harassment, audits etc). As Ralph Waldo Emerson remarked, "Patience and patience, we shall win at last."

I think you missed part of LK's point. The leadership of America has always been a dirty whore. They have not changed. They were always scum. They did not have the power to manipulate the people they do now and Americans, in the past, had a much more self reliant and stronger character. The common people in America have degenerated into the worthless tubs of shit they are now. America did not fight any wars for justice. The dumbasses doing the fighting thought they were fighting for justice but the Elites manipulated them with that propaganda to protect their interests. America fought WWI and II to protect the interests of the New York banks that lent money to the English. If the English lost, those loans would not be paid. LK is correct, America has always been a dirty whore. The only difference between now and the past is the now, the common people of America are fat, willfully ignorant tubs of shit. 20 years ago they weren't. Some of that is due to the gains in the quality of propaganda and mind control tools the elite have, and some is just due to the degeneration of the quality of the average American. The elite that own America do not really need the american people anymore. They have conquered the planet. Their interests are global and don't intersect with the interests of Americans anymore. Those fat dumbshit Americans haven't figured that out yet. They probably never will? By the way, I am an American from Texas surrounded by these morons. This includes most of my family!

Bingo! The Swiss Confederation has a system similar to the Articles of Confederation and they have preserved a working republic to this day. We, on the other hand, have turned into a tyranny. Washington was deceived about Shay's Rebellion and persuaded to support a strong central government. Chief Justice Marshall doomed us when he ruled the Supreme Court was the final arbiter of the federal government's power. Like all unregulated positive feedback systems it was only a matter of time before it would self-destruct.

You left out our nation's churches: i.e.. A church establishment that only seeks to protect it’s privileged and financial status with the political establishment by retaining its 5013c’s and refusing to speak out on any of the above issues for fear of losing its income. Unlike the Revolutionary War, the churches are on the King's side because they want the gold. <Signed Mike in Arizona

Very good article, but you failed to answer the critical question, why. The answer is that for the last hundred years, but particularly since 1963, the US has been slowly taken over by the Zionists, all that's wrong in America is due to it's using the Zionist modus operandi - cruel, vicious and corrupt to the core.

"It goes back to what the United States started out as: A fragile, delicate, wonderful experiment"

In who's eyes was this ever true?Would this be true in the eyes of the eyes of the Arawaks whom with the arrivial of Columbus were systematically enslaved and murdered?

Would this be true of the Natives of what would become the continental United States, to which the most horrible atrocity's were committed, hunting them to a near state of extinction?

Would this be true for the slaves, whom even after the implementation of the constitution claiming that "All Men are created Equal" were still nothing other than property?

This is a theme that has been continually played out from the first "discovery" of this continent all the way through to the present. Lies and deceit. False flags and lies. Murder, mayhem and enslavement. Arrogance, selfishness and greed. Horror's upon horror's visited upon the populations upon this planet while the blind ignorant crowds cheer "We are saving them from themselves". All the while, the truly evil, the vile powers which are in control ravage and savage the earth for all of her precious resources of which they may profit, keeping it for themselves while causing us to fight, bicker and kill ourselves.

I am not passing a judgment here, nor can I. This is what has been and what is.

I don't approve of everything my parents do or have done in the past, but I still love them. In a few years they'll be gone and I'll have to carry on without them. That's exactly how I feel about the United States of America.

All nations die. Very few last more than 250 years. Ours is approaching financial collapse and a third civil war (the rebels won the first in 1783 and the loyalists won the second in 1865). Whether this leads to a national rebirth or a hopeless demographic death spiral (cf. Russia) is hard to guess.

It's all futile speculation,The total dilema is in which direction things should go to avert inihiliation, and the loonies in US academia, being all elitist commies who have never seen it, communism, from the inside, I have, they are in the drivers seat, having usurped all power, and the idiots filling the voting ranks of "benefits" addicts being their ballot slaves, will make sure that the donkeys remain firmly enscounced in DC until it is fulfilled, the dream of the "True workers paridise".

Sadly what you say is correct but I would like to add one thing... Moral character is missing in all of the facets you mention. That missing moral character is what makes all the atrocities that America is doing possible. I am deeply saddened by all I see in America but until our moral character returns the problems of America will only get worse. Until we the people connect once again with God our beautiful America will continue to decay and die.

Common Law Grand Juries are forming up in many States, get involved and indict the bastards, if the judges won't comply indict their asses too.The criminals are not going to give you your country back, your going to have to take it back.

Yes, interest is the killer. It leads to clumping of capital. The plutocrats hoard money. With interest and unfair agreements they suck money out of circulation. The central banks continue to pump more money into circulation for liquidity. It's a game. To all who have, more will be given.

Money is a deal for the exchange of something valuable. All money is «fiat»: it's an society's pact. Rare metals like gold and silver have intrinsic value but this doesn't matter. As a farmer why should I accept your gold? I can't eat your coins nor plant them. Why should I believe that your coins are pure? Therefore gold coins are «fiat». I as a farmer need to believe and trust your coins to buy me things of value, things I need, like seeds. It's just a currency. It's not better nor worse than dollars.

You see, a currency is an embodiment of money. Society needs to recognize, reliably discern and trust the currency units. It's an accord that you can exchange them for things of value. Dollar is a currency, gold is a different currency. The trust and exchange value levels might be different, but the principle stays the same.

Take care that you don't get thrown out of the frying pan into the fire by buying gold.

I totally agree but I think the corruption of America started a long time ago , before WW2 .In my opinion the existence of a very powerful foreign enemy (you know how I mean , right?) delayed the escalation of the problem.America is where it is now because the people in charge decided to privatize the wealth of the entire nation.By the way this is the reason why that powerful foreign enemy is no more.Unlike in the widespread propaganda , the problem was not in the viability of the system like "it was destined to fail" but it was brought down by the people who were supposed to protect it from domestic and foreign enemies.Basically the elite itself became a domestic enemy and destroyed everything for the sake of taking the wealth of the entire nation.I fear the US is going the same path and I am doubtful this process can be stopped...

“The American Dream has run out of gas. The car has stopped. It no longer supplies the world with its images, its dreams, its fantasies. No more. It’s over. It supplies the world with its nightmares now. …”

1. The US never got over fighting WWII, never mind the Cold War (see The Best War Ever, Michael C.C. Adams).

2. The Roman Republic lasted 500 years give or take. The Empire still dressed up as a Republic another 500. Not too bad a record. Quite a few others, several lasting several hundred years including India and Russia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republics#Classical_republics

3. Why were we supposed to fail? Shay's Rebellion was put down and the Constitution adopted so Europe would take us seriously and trade w/ us, so we would last. The whole point was not to fail. The philosophic basis of the country goes back to Plato's Republic, Aristotle's views on the "3rd Class of Friendship" and the Roman Stoic's.

4. They got rid of the Central Bank in the 1830's, basically so people could go crazy w/ greed. The eventual total chaos resulting led to it being reinstated in 1913.

5. The existence of the House w/ it's 2 year term (a sop to the rabble) vs the Senate 6 yrs appointed by State Legislatures (the elites and the real power) and the President voted into office essentially by the legislatures.

6. John Adams went against the Bill of Rights due to the Quasi-War w/ the French in the Alien and Sedition Acts which he disapproved of and only did so he would get re-elected or not impeached. This showed your laws are only as strong as those elected and how they interpret them or how prepared they are to just ignore or overthrown them. You have no "inalienable rights" only those your government is willing to give you and enforce for you.

8. The military follows the civilian authorities. The Army didn't attack Iraq on it's own initiative.

9. A judiciary that has no problem allowing for the elimination of the most basic rights human beings have—habeas corpus, the right to due process, the right not to be tortured. A judiciary that has rolled back every single right as embodied in the Bill of Rights. See 6. If a human wrote it, he can take it away. These are not basic rights, I say again, there are none. In case you didn't understand the first and second times, there is not such thing as basic rights except as written in the countries laws. A Jew, Gypsy, homosexual, insane person in Nazi-Germany had no rights.

10. A scientific establishment more concerned with winning research funds, rather than arriving at the truth—indeed, a scientific establishment willing to sacrifice the truth, in order to secure more funding and be on the right side of current political fashion. Is this an attack on Global Warming? This is what those guys love to say.

11. A cultural establishment that cannot bring itself to protest or even mention the gross injustices committed by the political, military, judicial and finacial elites—yet is outraged over ephemera and perceived racism, sexism, homophobia or elitism. What? There is racism and homophobia and sexism. Also how would we know about the various gross injustices if the media never reported on them. Most of this stuff is on NPR (that's National Public Radio) in one form or another everyday. Also see Amy Goodman's Democracy Now http://www.democracynow.org/

"[Often I find my self feeling] [A]n inchoate rage at what I perceive that the United States has become. A hurt at what the country has become, a hurt as real as if it were a wound in my body."

I suggest you look at the positive side, Gonzalo - I assume you benefitted from your stay in the U.S.: you received a good education, had the economic freedom to earn a good living, had wide freedom to choose your own lifestyle, political beliefs and philosophy, and the freedom to express those beliefs. You also had the freedom to leave when you realized that was the best thing for you. I'd say the U.S.A. was pretty good to you.

As you ponder her deteriorating situation now, let the memories of what was soften your pain, and remember that few things last forever.

I'm sure Chile isn't perfect either. It has its own problems, imperfections, and corruption, even though their problems are smaller in scale than what you see in the U.S.A. today.

Nope, you're wrong. This was not why America failed. The stupid and greedy people are the problem.

Also, 'ebag' was the only commenter who pointed out something equally as important. To him, I would say that, yes, true, but the reason the fiat was accepted, was again, because the people were too stupid and too greedy.